It’s only spring, but Joe Moshier is already dreaming about the winter holidays. In fact, he’s vicariously living them while working on the animated musical Margie Claus. “It’s a Christmas movie,” says Moshier. “It’s awesome and fun. I love Christmas, so it’s right up my alley.”
As a kid, Moshier was also passionate about sports, aspiring to be a professional baseball or soccer player. But fate—in the form of the long-time host of The Popeye Show—stepped in to quite literally “draw” him in another direction. “At some point in junior high, I fell in love with art,” recalls Moshier. “There was this guy [on TV], Tom Hatten, who could draw Popeye like nothing, like it was breathing. I’m like, ‘Okay, this guy’s a magician, and he’s doing magic in front of my eyes.’”
Moshier grew up in San Diego next door to his Italian nonna, whose paintings inspired him, as well. For his own art, he started out drawing portraits of the people on his baseball cards, eliciting raves from his mother. Fueled by that validation and by a copy of Cartoon Animation with Preston Blair given to him by his father, he began ramping up his art skills and changed his career trajectory from ballplayer to professional animator.
Sports’ loss has been cinema’s gain. The kid who envisioned himself becoming a Supervising Animator at Disney did indeed reach the House of Mouse, but as a Character Designer on such films as The Emperor’s New Groove and Chicken Little, and Lead Character Designer on Home on the Range and Meet the Robinsons.
“Everyone in the industry has had to overcome that [rejection]… If this is something that is a part of you like it is a part of me, and you can’t live without it, then you know what to do. You’ve just got to keep pushing through.”
“I never thought I’d be a Character Designer,” Moshier admits. “Like every other geek at CalArts, I admired Glen Keane and Milt Kahl and all of [Disney’s] Nine Old Men.” He focused on designing his own characters for his shorts and segments because he assumed that all the great Supervising Animators were doing this, and he thought that would help him become a solid animator.
Mission accomplished. Two years in at CalArts, Moshier landed an internship at Chuck Jones’ animation studio during which he showed Jones—another of his animation idols—illustrations of Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote. Jones admired his drawing, but he noted that young Moshier’s Bugs seemed to be more in the style of another Looney Tunes icon, Robert McKimson.
This was not what Moshier wanted to hear. “I was like, ‘What? What! What’s happening to my life right now!’” Moshier says. “’I’m drawing Bugs like you, Chuck.’”
Jones took the drawing of one of the main poses and drew three heads of Bugs Bunny. As he drew, he listed off the character’s defining attributes—chubby cheeks, eyelashes, round belly. Moshier still has that treasured artwork.
Following his internship with Jones, Moshier got a call from Disney and was hired as a Rough In-Between Artist. On his first day on The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he noticed some eye-popping model sheets of Hunchback characters. Assuming they had been drawn by Milt Kahl, he discovered the drawings were actually the work of Tony Fucile and James Baxter who had supervised the animation on Mufasa and Rafiki, respectively, on The Lion King.
“I felt blown away because those designs were so capable and appealing, so classic,” Moshier says. “All of a sudden, I realized: I’m so lucky to be on this movie.”
A week later, he was called into Fucile’s office and asked whether he’d like to design some Hunchback characters. Fucile and Baxter had looked at a few of Moshier’s warm-up sketches, liked what they saw, and gave him the opportunity. His first character was a pigeon, and Moshier treated it like the chance of a lifetime. He went to the park, watched ladies feeding pigeons, and went nuts. “I did like 500 pigeon drawings,” he says. “I went way overboard, but I didn’t want to mess up this opportunity.”
It’s a lesson he imparts when he speaks to students: don’t look at how others have addressed a challenge. Studying the real thing is always the surest way to come up with a singular design or solution.
“I see that happening at some of the studios, and I get depressed,” Moshier says. “I can tell that people aren’t pushing themselves. I think it’s really important to establish your design goal … whether it’s a small assignment or a larger one.”
Moshier left Disney for DreamWorks, starting out on Rise of the Guardians. His career in character design continued on projects that included Croods and How to Train Your Dragon 2. Then, in 2023, after a stint at Sony where he served as Character Art Director on Vivo and Character Design Lead on Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, his former DreamWorks Animation president, Bill Damaschke, lured him over to Warner Bros. It’s been quite the journey, and Moshier advises others who embark upon it to prepare for speed bumps.
“Being able to get past rejection is important,” he says. “It doesn’t mean you’ve failed because you’ve been rejected. Everyone in the industry has had to overcome that… If this is something that is a part of you like it is a part of me, and you can’t live without it, then you know what to do. You’ve just got to keep pushing through.”
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